Consulting, Coaching & Chatter

From the beginning of 21st Century Strategies, a long, long time ago, we’ve had one driving value: help transform churches. We suspect that pretty much all our readers understand that one of the ways we do that is by offering professional consultation services, church leadership coaching, and congregational training. What many folks may not realize is that when we write books, articles, newsletters, FAQs, ore respond to questions on the Advanced Leadership Forum of the 21st Century Strategies Community, we don’t hold anything back. Everything we do is focused on helping churches – and ultimately, for us, there is nothing more important than that, so we don’t keep back the secrets to success.

All that’s to say, for those willing to do the work, pretty much everything we teach, every recommendation we make, and every “secret” we have is there on our website and in our books. And with that knowledge, there’s really no reason they couldn’t do a respectable and effective Do It Yourself Consultation. With that in mind, let me (us) point the way.

Step One: Data Gathering

The foundation for every consultation we do begins with demographics. Now, before you surf over to the Census Bureau, Percept, or MissionInsite, some of the most important demographics you need to really “know” and “understand” are those of your congregation. And how old and how many and how long and how much and so on is just the start. You’ll want to measure attitudes toward leadership, hospitality, and their aversion to changes – and what specific changes will create the most waves. The forms we use for gathering and compiling all this data is found in The Complete Ministry Audit.

Congregational demographics are only the starting point for understanding your congregation. Next, you’ll need to pull some decadal statistics. You’ll be looking for trends, once the data is compiled, so make sure you pull the statistics for each year so you can plot them. You’ll want to get the information on income and giving; expenditures, including capital, maintenance, program, staff, and missional spending; attendance in each worship service, Sunday/Sabbath school, choir, and any small groups; baptisms, transfer of membership, deaths, departures, and general membership figures. One of the revealing, and often startling and disturbing, trends can be seen when these are plotted on a line graph. In far too many churches, the trend lines trail off and even the least savvy can make an educated guess on when the church will be no more and/or have inadequate funding to sustain even the most basic ministries.

Once you have a true understanding of the congregational, then it’s time to pull community demographics. The boundaries of your ministry area are important, so choose them carefully – and remember, your effective ministry area may not be equivalent to a particular zip code or a simple circle with the church in the center. In addition to the standard demographics, you will want to get a psychographic workup as well so you not only the raw statistics, but will have some understanding of what’s important to those in your community, plus how they spend their time and money and affections.

With the basic data gathered, you’ll be able to find connecting points for reaching into the community, but you’re not even close to ready for that now. The next step is to begin the evaluations.

Evaluating

Data is pretty much black and white, so it can be tempting to start making recommendations immediately. But before effective recommendations can be made, you’ll need to honestly and seriously evaluate virtually everything associated with the church. And though everything we’ve covered up until now can be found in our books, it’s time to mine the 21^st Century Strategies website (ChurchConsultations.com).

Building and Grounds

It’s probably easiest to start with evaluating the physical plant. How much property do you have – and need – for the number of seats you have in the worship center? How is the property divided up and how many parking spaces do you have? What is that state of your property? Is it in good repair, or do you need to resurface the parking lot and paint the church’s shutters? Once you’re done outside, move inside to check the usability, access, and repair of the facilities. How many usable seats are there? Where is the nursery and does it meet minimum hospitality standards? The list can go and on, but literally everything you need to evaluate – and the measures to use – can be found on the website. Here’s a mining tip: most of the information you need can be found in the extensive FAQ section.

Congregational DNA

Once the building and grounds are out of the way, you may be thinking it’s time to evaluate the programs of the church. Before you can do that, you’ll need to put on your critiquing hat and look over the congregational DNA. Start by evaluating whatever foundational work has been done in the past and consider whether or not the mission statement is even viable. The sad fact is, many are theological and sociological treatises that carry lots of baggage, but little weight. Next, if the congregation has done additional DNA work, carefully evaluate the core values, the bedrock beliefs, the vision, the expected behaviors, and any strategic foci that’s been adopted. Again, you can find evaluation tools on our website – and don’t forget to check out our respective blogs (www.billeasum.com and www.billtennybrittian.com).

Of course, the real evaluation is in whether or not decisions are made based on the DNA, or is it just so much window dressing? The only way to find this out is to check the hierarchical, organization, and decision making structures – and here’s the tricky part, to get a real feel, you’ll have to ferret out both the formal and the ever-elusive informal structures. Once you discover these, then compare the DNA to the way decisions are made. Is the loudest voice more influential than the congregational DNA statements? If so, who are those loudest voices?

The DNA evaluation doesn’t stop with decision making though. The next step is to compare staffing against the DNA and the congregational size/budget. You’ll need to consider whether the current staffing is effectively organized around the congregational mission and vision or are they organized around anachronistic “generalist” or age-graded structures. In addition, you’ll need to consider whether you’re staffed for growth, maintenance, or decline. And of course, there’s the question of budget projections you’ll need to consider as well before you begin the recommendation process.

Programming

Finally, it’s time to evaluate your congregational programming. For sanity’s sake, you’ll want to consider your worship programming separately from the rest of your programming.

Once again, begin your evaluations by comparing everything the congregation does against the congregational DNA – and we’re talking about measuring everything. Start with the obvious programs: Sunday school, small groups, fellowship events, classes, gender and age based groups, ministry and outreach events and groups, and so on. It may be easiest to work from the congregational calendar and ask of everything on the schedule, “Does this specifically support and enhance the congregational DNA?” If you have to think about it for more than a split second, the answer is probably that it doesn’t. Make your list so you’ll be ready to make your recommendations for what programs should get the axe, which should be phased out, which should receive no support (a Do Not Resuscitate order), and which should be embraced and enhanced. Your recommendations will need to include these, along with specific steps for accomplishment while minimizing conflict (you can’t avoid conflict, but you can certainly minimize it).

As you consider each of the congregational programs, you’ll also need to seriously evaluate whether or not they are “doors” for guests to become integrated with the congregation. It’s critical that you identify each open and closed door. For instance, some Sunday school classes may “say” they are open to guests, but in reality guests may find it difficult to become a “part” of the group. This kind of information will be necessary for making effective recommendations later on.

Worship

In most churches today, the worship service is the core practice of the congregation and so demands significant scrutiny. However, this can be difficult for an “insider” to evaluate – but again, mining our websites will offer concrete suggestions.

If your congregation has multiple worship services, you will want to evaluate each separately, unless they are duplicate services. For each service, begin the evaluation by asking yourself, “For whom is this service targeted?” Begin by exegeting the explicit target (heavily churched sixty-year-olds and older; church-lite baby boomers; rarely churched thirty-somethings with families; etc.). Next, compare the actual service to the expectations of that target. It’s not just about music – you’ll need to consider style, formality, language, dress code (including the unspoken code), technology, participation opportunities, music selection, music performance, instrumentation, sermon theme, sermon delivery, presumptive participant foreknowledge, gender/age/dress/appearance of anyone who conspicuously serves, the content and layout of any bulletin/handouts, hospitality, feedback opportunities, level of excellence, and more. In addition, when evaluating the suitability of a service to a particular target don’t forget to check the supporting services such as children’s worship and nursery care.

When it comes to the worship service, you will want to take special notice of hospitality services. Start with the parking lot and work your way in. Are there smiling, friendly, gregarious “never-met-a-stranger” greeters on both sides of the front door? How long after the service starts do they remain in place? Are there greeters at other doors of the church that might be used by a first time guest who didn’t know for sure where the front door is? How about ushers? Are they glorified bulletin dispensers, or do they actually ush? Is there anything in the service that could embarrass a guest who wanted to remain anonymous and unmolested? Don’t forget signage. Is there any place in a hallway, narthex (vestibule/entry way), fellowship hall, auditorium , multi-use room, etc. where a guest would be unable to see a sign that pointed the way to the restrooms, nursery, or worship center?

Marketing and Follow Up

When embarking on the DIY consultation, don’t neglect to evaluate the systems the church is using to reach out to the community, let them know they’re there, and then follow-up once someone has visited. Check to see how much money the congregation is spending on low-response marketing such as newspaper and Yellow Pages advertising. Check the website for missing critical information or critical information that’s buried deep within the site. If directions or worship times are more than one click from the home page, it may be considered inaccessible by the average web surfer.

Guest follow up cannot be overlooked either. You’ll need to evaluate the church’s effectiveness in getting guest contact information. The next issue to check is to see what they do with that information. How soon after a visit is there an in-person home visit and who makes that visit? You’ll also need to find out how effective the follow-up is by crunching the return rate of first time guests.

Finally, check to see if there’s an intentional integration (assimilation) plan for helping guests connect with those in the church. If not, do guests have to claw their way into the fellowship? You can find out how effective the congregation’s integration programming is by crunching the number of first time guests who remain active in the congregation a year after their first visit.

Evaluate the Main Thing

Although there is much more that can, and perhaps should, be evaluated, there is one more area that is essential when attempting a Do It Yourself consultation. I’ve left this to last not because it’s least important, but because without  making this area a priority in the evaluation, it won’t matter what you recommend: the transformation will fail.

The main thing of the church is discipleship. The question that must be answered is whether or not new people are becoming effective, practicing disciples of Jesus who engage in the spiritual disciplines or not. And the second is like the first – are the church leaders spiritually centered, grounded, and practicing disciples of Jesus who engage in the spiritual disciplines. In any consultation, whether we’re doing an onsite consult or you’re engaged in a DIY consultation, this is the number one, most important, make it or break it question. If the leaders are not model disciples of Jesus who are engaged in the regular study of scripture, immersed in prayer and reflection, sharing their faith with the unchurched and marginally churched, and practicing the one-anothers in every aspect of their lives, then it won’t make any difference what you recommend. Indeed, this was the primary failure of the Church Growth movement of the seventies and the eighties – program without spiritual foundationing.

Evaluating the main thing can be difficult, but you can get a pretty good read on it by measuring the level on ongoing, unresolved conflict and by simply asking some key questions of the leaders (try the Discipleship Development Questions – again, found on the website). If the leaders aren’t modeling discipleship, then it’s a pretty good bet the congregation isn’t. And if the congregation isn’t, then guests will come and guests will go, but it will be the rare guest who is still a part of the congregation eighteen months after their initial visit.

Making Recommendations

When it comes time for making recommendations, there is a specific order – at least at the front end – that is imperative to follow … at least if you want to actually transform the church.  Top on that list is the spiritual discipline practices of the leadership. This, of course, also includes intentionally dealing with unresolved conflict and implementing systems for dealing with conflict as it arises. How you recommend putting this into place is largely contextual, but leadership modeling, integrity, and accountability is core to a successful transformation.

Next on the list would be shoring up the DNA if it’s needed. Since the DNA infuses every aspect of the congregation’s function and form, it’s virtually impossible for a congregation to move forward without  clear, concise, embedded, and modeled mission, values, vision, beliefs, and behavior statements.

Third comes hospitality. In this case, we’re not just talking about greeters and hosts, but everything the church does to engage both those outside the church as well as those inside. For instance, as “friendly” as a church might be when a guest walks through the door, if the music is foreign to their ears; if the language is encoded with Christianese;  if there is an expectation that they are familiar with the Judeo-Christian meta story and/or have memorized the rituals and rites; if the location of the restrooms is the church’s best-kept secret; if the nursery has security, sanitation, or safety issues; or if a newcomer has to commit felony breaking-and-entering to get into a group, then there are hospitality issues.

The rest of the recommendations are pretty much determined by context. Reorganization and bylaw rewrites are rarely more than a miscellaneous item – giving it priority is a rookie mistake since form follows function, not the other way around. Again, virtually every recommendation we’re likely to make can be found on our websites or in our books.

So, there you have it – a veritable step-by-step DIY consultation. If it sounds complicated and complex, it’s because it is. Between us, Bill Easum and I have done hundreds of customized consultation and each one is as unique as your situation. On the other hand, as you’ve no doubt surmised, there’s a method to the work we do and the recommendations we make. Follow the steps in this article, mine the depths of our sites and our books, and you’ll have at your fingertips everything you need to work from data gathering, through evaluation, and ultimately to making church-transforming recommendations.

Final Note

Just in case this all seems like too complex and too much work, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Bill Easum and I both have room in our schedule to work with you and your church. Whether your congregation needs an onsite consultation, you or your leaders need coaching, or there’s a  need for congregational training, we’re committed to helping churches become increasingly effective.

I checked and it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve blogged. Those who follow this closely (both of you J) might have wondered if I’d fallen off the face of the planet or if I had suddenly got really, really busy. I’ll claim the latter, though sometimes it feels like the former. The bad news, I suppose, is that the near future doesn’t look much better. I’ve still got too many jobs and not enough hours to do them in.

But in the midst of my personal craziness, I’ve compiled a list of things I really need to write about. For instance, I finally got around to outlining and submitting a book proposal for Why Your Small Groups Don’t Change Lives … And What To Do About It. The first chapter can be found in the next two issues of Net Results magazine (the May–June, 2009 and July–August 2009 issues). I need to write the missing steps to living the one-anothers, AKA Getting Past “I’m sorry.” There’s something about first-time church visitors feeling like they’re wearing a sombrero on their birthday at a Mexican restaurant while the all the patrons stare at them and sing “Happy Birthday” that is demanding my attention. And I’ve got what seems to be about a dozen more calling out to me. All in my spare time.

However, in an earlier comment, a reader asked if I had thoughts about tracking everyone who attends worship, specifically how to do that. I’ll address the how in a moment, but before I do I want to address the why.

Attendance tracking is, admittedly, a pain. This is true in small churches where the charter members who have been there since sand refuse to fill out those “silly cards” because “everyone” knows if they’re there or not. And it’s a pain in very large churches where a couple thousand cards get filled in each week – and that’s a LOT of paperwork to have to deal with.

The typical “solution” for both ends of the scale has been to try to get the visitors and guests to sign the registration pads, or cards, or whatever. If the church leadership are sharp, they’ll recognize that the power of suggestion when everyone else is filling out a “prayer and communication” card helps get guests to surrender their contact information. Convincing “everyone” to fill out those cards can be daunting, but the increase in getting first-time guest’s to give up their contact info is generally worth it.

I’ve said enough about follow-up in previous posts, in Net Results, in the On Track E-zine that I should hardly have to say anything. But for those who may have missed it, the research still says that a guest has more than an 85 percent chance of returning if the pastor visits within twenty-four hours of their initial visit – and the percent drops like a rock with each passing day. So, obviously, the first reason for gathering attendance tracking records is to connect with first time and returning guests.

I want to add an additional word about follow-up for those of you who lead larger churches. The reality appears to be that the larger the church, the less likely there is an effective follow-up practice. Clearly, the larger the church the more work follow-up becomes. In fact, it can seem overwhelming and I suppose that’s why so few large churches do much more than dash off the mail-merge “We’re so glad you joined us this week, your presence made all the difference” (as if!). I wonder if church leaders think their guest are as naïve as they treat them? Do they not think the guest is singularly unimpressed by the impersonal and less-than-welcoming welcome letter? And of course, from that point on the guest will receive unsolicited advertising for the church’s upcoming events.

I’m curious, though. How did these churches get that large? In most cases it was because the lead pastor was serious about follow-up and helping newcomers connect. They did the work of reaching out. But when the church gets “large” that becomes a thing of the past because the pastor is, truly, too busy “running a church” to do follow-up on his/her own. And so, it appears that in most cases, the onus of connecting is shifted from the church’s list of responsibility to that of the guest. If a guest wants to be a part of the church, they’ll have to do the connecting on their own. I suppose the presumed trade off is that the large church now offers really great programming and that’s so attractive that guests will jump at the chance to get involved. Hmm. I wonder if that’s one of the many reasons large churches discover they’re “leaking” participants. They come in the front door, fail to really connect, and then make their way back out via the revolving door.

Guest tracking is a pain. Did I mention that? It’s work. An active, healthy church “should” see between a 3–5 percent visitor count (three to five first time visitors for every hundred in attendance). In a church of 1000 AWA, that means thirty to fifty new folks on any given week. That’s simply too much for any individual, but a follow-up team of ten could handle that in about an hour on Sunday afternoon. Yes, the larger the church, the larger the follow-up team you’ll need. Plus you’ll probably want to want to work a database for tracking returning guests for further follow-up (your follow-up process should walk a guest from first visit to a discipleship or ministry group).

But what about tracking all your members? Is there value in that? The fact is, there shouldn’t be, but sadly for many churches, there probably is. In an effective, healthy church, 100 percent of the church’s leadership (from board members to committee chairs to Sunday school teachers) would be expected to be in a small group. Because of their example, the membership at large, would be involved in small groups as well. These small groups would be more than just a Bible study, but would be close-knit communities of faith who took care of each other. If someone “missed” a weekly get together, the group would know why or they’d find out.

However, the fact is, most churches are neither effective nor healthy. The church that has over 50 percent of their participants in small groups is a rarity, and those who have over 70 percent in small groups are writing books about how they’re doing it. And so, tracking membership can have significant advantages. For one, if your congregation has a pastoral visitation team, knowing when someone has missed a week or two could trigger a pastoral call (not by the lead pastor, however). There are dozens of shepherding programs that have been designed for congregations just like that. Most of them are borne of great ideas that should work, but in unhealthy or ineffective churches it can be difficult to recruit the requisite number of servant volunteers to get the job done. That’s not to say don’t take it on, but if you want to launch a membership visitation program, know that there are likely underlying issues that (1) makes the program attractive and (2) makes it difficult to implement.

Nonetheless, the solution to the dilemma of membership follow-up is to launch and sustain an effective small group ministry, a feat that you’ll not launch overnight. And until my book on small groups is out, you’ll want to lean on Larry Osborne’s Sticky Church and smallgroups.com for information on how to create effective and multiply a network of small groups (unless you’re up for inviting me to your place to do some training).

On the other hand, if you’re committed to launching an all-membership tracking program, using the prayer and communication cards each week and literally training your congregation to fill them out is one of the only really effective ways of getting the information (if you have an alternative working model, please let me know).

Just a quick post while I’m on the road. A colleague of mine and I were talking about appropriate follow-up plans for first-time visitors and I referenced a recent thread on the Easum, Bandy & Tenny-Brittian Community Advanced Leadership forum about what was considered a “valuable” gift. I had written about the pastor taking a gift to a first-time visitor within 24 hours of their visit in an earlier blog post and mentioned a coffee mug as a gift. In the “valuable” gift thread, I echoed Tom Bandy’s sentiments that a gift taken to a guest should reflect something of value … and folks, coffee mugs just don’t make it much in that realm. Why, even the local garage and the banks give away mugs and though they can be a “nice” gift, very few people marvel at the gift of a mug from a Realtor, let alone a church. A gift of value is something that sets you apart from the crowd … it makes an impression.

So, back to the convesation with my colleague. We were talking about “valuable” gifts and I mentioned that in some locales, a plate of homemade cookies (with a fridge magnet for posterity’s sake) would be more memorable than a mug. That sparked an insight. Turns out that one of the churches there in Jefferson City has a bee keeper and first time visitor leave the worship service with a small jar of honey. On the following day, a member of their follow-up team takes the guests a loaf of hot homemade bread to go with their honey. I thought … what a good idea!

But their program could be made even more effective with two additions. First, I love the idea of sending them home with honey. That’s a nice way to get visitors to identify themselves and give up their contact information. Second, I love the idea of taking them hot homemade bread … but the pastor should be the one taking it, and s/he should be taking it that day. But there’s still one thing missing. Permanency. Once the bread’s gone and the honey’s gone, there’s nothing but a memory. It’ll be a good memory, but they may or may not remember where the great gift came from six months from now when a crisis hits and they seek both God and a church in earnest.

So I did a very brief Google search and came up with this: a small honey pot to go with the bread and honey ($2,70 each). Someone with a steady hand could add the name and contact info of the church on the honey pot (or a ceramic’s group could actually make them and decorate them by hand) and then the valuable gift has everything … it creates good will, it makes an impression, and it has permanency to preseve the memory. And if this church (or yours) did this, first time visitors would be telling their friends about the church they visited that helped them feel valuable too.

This post started off as a response to a comment left by Frank in the Churches That Don’t Want To Grow post. He attends a fifty year old church in a fifty year old neighborhood that’s suffering from decline. He wanted to know a bit more about visitor follow up and so on.

So, let me offer a couple of observations. Churches that find themselves in this kind of dither would generally benefit from either an on site consultation or a one day training event. It’s really very difficult to offer specifics about what a church needs to do without knowing the church fairly intimately. If you’re interested in something like that, let me invite you first to visit the EBT site and get some information … or contact me directly.

With that said,I’ll make some general observations.

First, before you do anything, you have to check your hospitality level. Are you really as friendly as you think you are? Few churches are. The easiest way to discern your hospitality level is to get an unchurched person to visit the congregation (you might have to pay them), don’t tell anyone in advance that they’re coming, and then have them check out the congregation’s worship. Have them keep their eyes open for relevance, friendliness, cleanliness – in short, all the things they’d most likely be looking for anyway. Then meet them for lunch about a half hour after they’ve left and record the conversation. You’ll need to record it because nobody else will believe you when you tell them what they report.

Second, you have to determine whether what your worship is experiential for those who might visit. Imagine going to a worship service where the style of music was totally foreign, the words spoken were difficult to follow, and the customs were unfamiliar – for most people, even well churched people, the opportunity to experience a touch from the Holy would be slight. Same goes for an unchurched person. Our songs are often from two, three, or four hundred years ago, played on instruments that were last popular with the Doors (a mighty long time ago for many of us), and the style of communication and the traditions we practice can be difficult to follow (ask a thoroughly unchurched person to define “invocation” or “doxology” or if you really want to get an odd look, ask whether they can quote the Lord’s Prayer and whether they say sins, debts, or trespasses.

If your worship is meaningful to your community; if your hospitality is excellent, then follow-up is critical.

There are a number of ways to get contact information in worship, but in my experience, the most effective is a three-pronged approach. (1) Have a prominent, well staffed, attractive, relevant, up-to-date, Information Kiosk. There should always be two people at the kiosk who are more interested in being available to visitors than they are in each other. They should be so well briefed, that if a guest asks “What’s important to the members of this church” that they could recite from their heart the core values of the congregation. Those staffing this kiosk need to be the sharp pencils in the box and they should be trained not only to be founts of information, but have the wherewithal to get visitor’s contact information.

(2) Get rid of your pew pads … they’re only more effective than doing nothing, and that only just – UNLESS everyone in the congregation fills them out completely every single week. And I don’t mean they just put their name in the book and check the “I’m a member” box. Completely. And since that’s not going to happen, find a nice dark file box for them and tuck them away in the attic. The most effective way to get guest information is to have a registration and prayer request card (one card, two sides) that is included as a tear off in the weekly program. Then, during the service, a moment is taken for EVERYONE to fill out the registration cards (it won’t matter how much info the members put, so long as they are writing on the cards when everyone else is) and to add any prayer requests to the card. After a few moments, the cards are collected … preferably separately from the offering plates, but you can combine the registration with offering if needed.

(3) The third part of the trifecta is to raise up and train floaters. Your congregation will need a couple of these gregarious, charismatic folks (if they’re currently singing in the choir, kick them out – gently – so they can do what they really do best … connect with people) to float around the worship space to connect specifically and foremostly with visitors and guests. When they spot on of us, they go and introduce themselves and strike up a conversation. By the time they’re through, if they’re good (good does not include pushy), they’ll know which small group or ministry the visitor might enjoy or benefit from, has their contact information (which is collected at the Information Kiosk), and maybe even has a coffee date for later in the week.

One last thing about the floaters. If you do the standard “Greeting Time” where the majority of people somehow think there’s a contest on how many hands they shake during the two-minute period, then it’s critically important for the floaters to keep their eyes open for guests who came late and to get into their space to welcome them, find out if there are any questions they may have, and in general to be friendly.

Put the three of these together, you’ll find you get more contact information than perhaps you’re ready for. As for what to do with that information … if your church has less than 400 in attendance, the pastor visits first time guests within 24 hours. If there are more than 500, a visiting team will need to be developed, though if you can get a team of up-fronters to do the deed, all the better. Again … 24 hours.

I had a GREAT conversation with the pastor of one of the churches I mentioned in my post Churches That Don’t Want to Grow. It probably won’t take you long to guess which of the pastors contacted me, since only one even had any way to know that I was there!

So, this pastor emails me and invites me to lunch (he hadn’t read the blog entry yet) and we had an excellent conversation. There’s a lot to admire in this young pastor who has planted this church. He’s young (did I say that already?), he’s clearly an entrepreneur, and he’s already wise before his years. The conversation came around to the church’s follow up practices and I shared my experience and what we’ve learned over the years with both research and consultations with over 1000 churches (and yes, some of those were even with young congregations). I wasn’t surprised at his response. It’s not verbatim, but here’s the gist. “We don’t do the visitation follow-up to their homes. We have a younger crowd (they do … mostly twenty and thirty somethings) and we don’t want them to get the impression that we’re a boomer mega church.”

The rest of the conversation was excellent, lively, and I’m impressed overall with this pastor. On my way home – I actually walked because the pre-autumn day here is beautiful today – and I mulled over his words. I was weighing them up thinking, “Well, maybe he’s right” when a couple of things struck me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

First, I’ve been to a LOT of mega churches and have discovered that, in general, their follow-up is just about as bad as most smaller churches. They don’t seem to want return visitors coming to their churches either. They may have been good at it once upon a time (that may be one of the ways they grew to be a mega church), but somewhere along the line, they either got cocky and let their follow up system lapse because they were getting plenty of return visitors (that’s what happens when you have the best show in town … even if the best show is also the most faithful presentation of the Gospel), or they got so big that they didn’t invest in or design a continuing follow up system. Certainly, of the mega churches in Columbia, MO that I’ve been to, and there are a couple and I’ve been to all of them I believe, none appear to be doing effective follow up, so in that regard it’s not likely any of this young pastor’s visitors will be confusing his church with a mega church.

But for me, here’s the clincher. Twenty and Thirty somethings are, in general, two generations from the church. They have little, if any, church background. Sure, there are always a few, but most … nope. And even for those that have, they almost certainly have no idea about mega church (or any other church) follow up practices and programs. It’s only us clergy and church leaders who have been a part of the church for awhile who even know that churches are supposed to be following up.And it’s only us who are steeped in church research who know that the boomer churches practiced front-door follow-up once upon a time.

So, it’s a bit of a distraction to say, “Well, our congregation is so young, we don’t want them to think we’re ____.” These visitors have no church experience … so let’s get real and at least go through the motions that perhaps we’re interested that they visited us. And who knows, when the pastor is standing at the front door of a first-time visitor’s home on Sunday afternoon, ready to hand them a church-branded coffee mug filled with goodies and church literature, s/he might have an opportunity to do more than just say “Glad you were with us.” Someone out there might actually have a question about the service or about a small group or about the children’s programming or ??? that the pastor could answer. And if the pastor’s taking follow up to the next level, and if the first-time visitor shows a modicum of interest, the pastor can always whip out their Blackberry right there on the spot and schedule a lunch or coffee appointment for later on in the week.

Okay, over the years I’ve visited a LOT of churches. Lots of them. And I can’t help it, but when I visit, my consultant hat is always part of my couture. Normally this doesn’t cause me a lot of consternation … sadly, my expectations for most churches is pretty low. My hopes are high, but I’ve been in way too many churches that are more like the Rotary than the body of Jesus Christ in motion.

So I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised that the last four churches I’ve visited seemed apathetic about growing. Oh, they all made some noise about welcoming visitors – “Especially first time visitors” – but their actions, or inactions spoke way more loudly than their words.

I’m just going to mention my last two church visits as examples. Last week I attended a new church start. It was my first visit to the congregation. They’ve been doing public worship for about a year and last week they “relocated” to a theater where they could seat almost 1200 people. There were less than 200 there for the opening worship service, which was a significant increase for them according to the pastor. So far so good.

The worship was fine. They didn’t make the guests stand up or in any way identify themselves. They did the innocuous “Shake hands with those near you” moment and I got to meet another first time guest. The music was authentic and the worship leaders worshipped first and led second. All good stuff.

But when it came to getting guest and member information … well, that was pretty ineffective. There were guest registration cards and pens on every third theater seat. They invited any first-time guests to fill it out and “give it to the pastor or his assistant [hand waved to identify the assistant] when you leave.” The church didn’t “pass” the offering plates so I could drop the completed card into it. Instead, they used an offering basket up front where you could drop your offerings in when you took communion. But we were specifically instructed to give the cards to the pastor or the assistant.

Not the best way to get contact information, but not the best. But, like the compliant kind of guy I am, I saw the assistant on my way out and gave him the card. It’s now one week later … I didn’t return this week … and as far as I can tell the ONLY thing they’ve done with the card is sent me one email newsletter and a card with the pastor’s signature and note about being glad I was there.

No contact with the pastor or anyone else. No phone call. Frankly, no meaningful follow-up.

How many times do we have to say this? Church growth gurus have been saying it for almost two decades … if you want visitors to become returning guests, there needs to be an in-person visit by the church within TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. And currently, the up front pastor needs to be the one doing the visit. The odds of a visitor returning if your pastor isn’t doing this within twenty-four hours drops significantly. And this is a church plant where the pastor has to be the number one net-caster.

The church I visited today made a mistake that is even worse that the one above. Way worse.

They didn’t get my contact information at all. In this case, the church is well established. In fact, they hope to go multi-site within the next year. The worship was fine. They didn’t identify me as visitor in front of everyone. The music was quite good, but the worship leaders were leading first and worshipping second. I didn’t leave marvelling at the incredible spiritual level of the congregation. Common mistake – not a good one, but pretty common. Did I mention I don’t really have high expectations when I visit churches?

Anyway, back to their big mistake. During the shake hands with your neighbor time, the pastor said … he actually said this … “If you’re a first time visitor, if you’ll look around you’ll see some black registration books and pads in the pews. If you’d go get one and fill it out ….”

You’ve got to be kidding me! First, we’ve been preaching that pew registration pads are the very worst for gathering contact information from guests … and frankly, from everyone else. But if you’re going to waste your time using them, at least use them. Don’t ask the visitor go hunt one down. In fact, there wasn’t a registration pad in my pew and frankly, I don’t really want the whole world to know “Hey, there’s a first time visitor – let’s go mob him and tell him how friendly we are,” so I wasn’t going to crawl over my row of chairs to get the one that I could see.

So they can’t even blow it when it comes to follow-up because they have no way of following up. In other words, they’re not interested in growing.

Well, that’s not true. I suppose both churches want to grow, but like the duck, the dog, the cow, and all the rest in the Henny Penny story, no one wants to do any of the hard work it takes to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

So, just for the record … how is your church effectively getting the names and contact information of your visitors, guests, and members? And once you have that information, what are you doing with it? If you have great ideas, we’d love to know.

A week or so ago, my wife and I attended the World Convention of the Christian Church in Nashville, TN. It was a nice convention and we enjoyed Nashville. One evening we decided we wanted to eat something other than Tennesee barbeque, so we stopped in at the Stoney River restaurant. It was a great experience … pricey, but excellent food and service. It was pretty much everything one could ask for and when we go back to Nashville, Stoney River will likely be one of the destinations on our meal menu.

Of course, even though it was good, there were about six different places we ate meals in Nashville. Many of them were quite good. But if you ask me to name any of the others, I couldn’t do it. There were a couple barbeque places down on Broadway. There was a really nice place out by the mall that’s currently under construction (complete with a nightmare visit I’ll not soon forget). But I remember Stoney River by name … and I could find it again too. Why? Because two weeks after our visit we got the postcard you see here from David T., our server.

What do you notice about it? It’s hand written. He managed to spell our names correctly (yes, he copied it from our reservation form, but you’d be surprised how many churches don’t seem to get the name right from their Registration Pads or Visitor Cards that we ALWAYS fill out). And it was timely. Sure, we live hours and hours and hours away from Nashville, so we’re not likely to go back next week … or next month … but we were important enough to warrant the postcard. And they captured a loyal customer.

A friend of mine from Jefferson City, shared a similar event from a church in Colorado. He and his wife were visiting a large church there in the “West” (BTW, how does Colorado make the designation “West”? Seattle is West. LA is West. Denver is at best the Mid-West). They filled out the requisite visitor’s card and figured they’d get the photocopied “Welcome to our church” letter “Signed” (ha!) by the pastor. But a week later, a box of goodies arrived at their door. Inside was a church mug, branded pen, information about the church, a very nice “Come back when you’re visiting in the area again” letter, and several other branded “gifts.” He guessed that there was more than $5 worth of stuff in the box and they’d paid well for the postage.

Seems like a waste, doesn’t it. The spent $8-$10 to “woo” a family who lives in Missouri. Where’s the return in that?

Ask Stoney River. Handwritten card and they’ve won a customer. And you’ve read about the restaurant. And we’ve mentioned it in several conversations.

Our friends may never return to Colorado. But he tells this story to almost everyone who passes through his doors. And if someone is heading to Colorado, they make a recommendation to the church … by name and location.

Both Stoney River and the Colorado Church know follow-up. They’re good at it.

Lessons learned …